In 1892, a prominent maritime painter of Armenian descent born in Crimea, Ivan Aivazovsky (1817–1900), made a gift to the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, of two of his oil paintings—The Relief Ship and Distributing Supplies—inspired by American humanitarian aid delivered to Russia during the famine of 1891‒92.
That famine, while not nearly as large as the one thirty years later, was significant: 36 million people were affected, of whom about 20 million, mostly peasants, were in dire distress. The mortality rate in the starving regions increased between 25 and 30 percent, resulting in 406,000 excess deaths. American aid, privately collected, was delivered by the Famine Fleet, as it became known, consisting of five ships loaded with relief supplies gathered from all US states.
American humanitarian aid to Russia during the famine of 1891‒92 was by far larger than that provided by any other foreign country. Scholars estimate that the value of American contributions amounted to 2 million rubles, or $1 million; American ambassador Charles E. Smith estimated that the American donations could sustain more than 700,000 people for one month. News of the crop failure in Russia and the dire situation of the peasants did not prompt an immediate response in the United States. Several factors were involved. To start with, Americans at this time had come to view the Imperial Russian government as despotic and therefore unworthy of assistance, however innocent its citizens might be. Recent antisemitic pogroms in the western regions of the Russian Empire, which triggered a wave of Jewish emigration to the United States, exacerbated that image of cruel tsarist tyranny. Perhaps influenced by the testimony of visitors to Russia’s major cities, where the famine was inconspicuous, some articles in the American press claimed that stories out of Russia about the severity of the famine were exaggerated.
Against this background, the US Congress declined to finance freight costs for relief ships to Russia, and its discussion of an appropriation of funds for humanitarian aid went nowhere. President Benjamin Harrison’s request for an appropriation of $100,000 to provide flour to Russia passed in the Senate but ran into stiff winds of opposition in the House of Representatives when the measure was debated in January 1892. “Can we have a friendship between tyranny and liberty, between Asiatic despotism and modern civilization?” asked a representative from West Virginia before answering his own question: “There is no friendship and can be no friendship between such opposing forces.”
US government aid was obstructed, but this did nothing to discourage private initiatives already under way. To inspire sympathy for suffering Russian peasants, philanthropically minded Americans evoked memories of the support that the Imperial Russian government had shown the United States during the Civil War. In 1863, Russia, seeking to avoid naval conflict with its European rivals, arranged for its Baltic and Pacific fleets to winter in the ports of New York and San Francisco, thereby providing moral support to the Union side in the conflict. Almost all humanitarian appeals in 1891 and 1892 referred to the idea of America’s debt to Russia, simplifying the circumstances of 1863 while suggesting symmetry between the two situations: thirty years earlier, Russian ships had arrived in the United States in its hour of need, and now America’s Famine Fleet must sail in order to return the favor.
The first large-scale humanitarian aid was started by the editor of the magazine Northwestern Miller, William C. Edgar, who on December 4, 1891, published an appeal to the millers of Minnesota and “every miller east of the Rocky Mountains” to transport as many sacks of flour as possible to his agents in New York for shipment to Russia. Soon Nebraska joined the movement with 1,350,000 pounds of corn, accompanied by instructions in Russian for how to cook this food, which was unfamiliar to Russian peasants.
On March 15, the Missouri, loaded with five and a half million pounds of flour and corn gathered from more than half of the states, left New York for the port of Libau (in modern-day Latvia), on the Baltic Sea. Edgar accompanied the cargo. The Missouri became the second ship to sail in the Famine Fleet. The first, the Indiana, departed Philadelphia on February 22, 1892, George Washington’s birthday, carrying five million pounds of flour. It was sponsored by a committee established in Pennsylvania by Governor Edwin S. Stuart, with the active participation of Rudolph Blankenburg, a Quaker businessman and a future mayor of Philadelphia. On April 23, another ship loaded with relief supplies gathered by that organization, the Conemaugh, departed for Russia.
Iowa was another center of humanitarian aid for Russia, an effort spearheaded by the editor of the Davenport Democrat, Benjamin F. Tillinghast, secretary of the Iowa Russian Famine Relief Committee. As in the case of Nebraska, Iowa’s aid consisted mostly of corn. The head of the American Red Cross, Clara Barton, supported the launch of another Iowa-based committee—the Iowa Women’s Auxiliary Committee to the Red Cross—a group of twelve women that collected financial donations in churches and schools and organized benefit concerts and plays. Iowa’s humanitarian efforts resulted in a shipment of three thousand tons of corn on a vessel called the Tynehead, accompanied by a smaller ship called the Borodino, to Riga (today the capital of Latvia).
The last ship in the Famine Fleet to sail, the Leo, which left New York for St. Petersburg on June 13, was sponsored by the editors of the Christian Herald magazine: a well-known pastor named Thomas De Witt Talmage and Louis Klopsch, a Prussian-born journalist and publisher. They had earlier sent a portion of their relief supplies with the Conemaugh. Talmage and Klopsch, who both sailed on the Leo at their own expense, received a most cordial reception in Russia, where their help was very much welcomed. Talmage was even granted an audience with Emperor Alexander III.
All the ships of the Famine Fleet reached Russia safely, and the relief supplies arrived in perfect condition, even though many skeptics had voiced concerns that corn could not withstand such a long journey. The only sorrowful event happened during the voyage of the first ship of the Famine Fleet, the Indiana, from New York to Libau. A mechanic named Atkinson, on deck during a storm, was injured and died. Having learned of this tragedy, citizens of Libau and readers of the newspaper the Russian Life gathered more than five thousand rubles and sent them to the mechanic’s family.
All the American relief ships received a hearty welcome from Russians: cities were decorated with American flags, orchestras played American songs in ports and at the events devoted to the guests, and the ships’ crews and the philanthropists accompanying the relief supplies were presented with mementos by Russian officials and ordinary citizens. These celebrations, however, did not distract from the main purpose of the Famine Fleet; upon arrival in the Russian port cities, Americans found that everything was ready for the offloading of the cargo and its shipment by rail to the starving regions.
The general field agent of the American Red Cross, Dr. Julian Hubbell, who supervised the distribution of the corn delivered by the Tynehead, was impressed that 240 peasants from Riga, a region not affected by the famine, were on the dock anxiously awaiting the ship as it arrived in port. They immediately started to unload the vessel, working night and day without rest, while twelve women, equally motivated, sewed up the bags to prevent waste in handling. American humanitarian aid reached the starving villages in the fastest possible way, and in the end all the American donations, which amounted to 22.5 million pounds of flour and corn, probably saved thousands of lives. (Hoover Institution)
As a matter of fact, both paintings have been banned/ censored in Russia since 1892. But in 2008, the paintings were sold at Sotheby’s Auctions for $2.4 million.
American Humanitarian Relief for Russian Famine in 1921-22 >
